>The best I've come up with is, NEVER EVER remove a page, DEFINATLY NOT if it lists well. DONT change it, or move it.
>
>COME ON HERE, the game is to get a GREAT listing. Now that you have it you want to get rid of it? I have pages I tried out over 2 years ago that never got into the top 200......... a couple of them now, for some unknown reason are #1.
>
>Ok, so you want to totaly redesign your site. What do you do with the old pages? Leave them, and put one large graphic (400 x 300 works well) at the very top of the page that says, "This page has been redesigned and Moved. Click here for the new page".
>
>Yeah, you might lose a few people that think it's not professional, BUT you'll gain a LOT more from the extra listings in the search engines.

Well, that's a good point, for sure. One other option I have is to
design a custom 404 error page which informs folks about the move and
then transfers them to the home page. This could be the best solution
since my home page doubles as a site map and they can very easily find
their destination from there.

The index type pages will be left since folks have linked to them.

Funny thing is, I haven't spent all that much time actually promoting
that site (by comparison to another). I took a whole bunch of photos
at some women's cycle races in support of that other site and decided
to start the Palmares site as a way of displaying the photos which we
could not use on the (former) primary site. I did some listing, but
the numbers just started to take off this year. I think the trick is
to put a bunch of photos of pretty girls up on the web and people will
come! Maybe I should patent the idea.

The other site: http://www.mariholden.com. Mari won an Olympic silver
medal (cycling time trial) and the World TT Championship. I am no
longer webmastering that site, but when I did it got 5 to 10 times the
traffic as any other site in its category, but it is way, way smaller
than the Palmares site now.